RECENT POSTS
- This Flu Kills
August 29, 2009 - Serious Doubts on Healthcare
August 27, 2009 - Ted Kennedy Dies
August 26, 2009 - Two and a Half Men: The Return of the Sitcom
August 24, 2009 - MJ's FBI File
August 24, 2009 - How Youth Make a Difference
August 22, 2009 - Hurricane Katrina Four-Year Anniversary: Have We Done Enough?
August 21, 2009 - Bringing Guns to Obama Town Halls
August 19, 2009
YOUNG VOICES
Stop Voting Your Age
Tired of the same old Black leadership? Eddie Glaude sure is - he argues on the show that young Black leaders must come to the fore to boot out their elders with fresh new ideas. In short, as our host summarized, everyday people “are the leaders they've been looking for” and should start asserting themselves.
Everyday leaders - people who mentor a single-parent's child, and volunteer at their local church - are all the kind of new leadership we need in America's communities.
But we seem to be stuck with a crop of people who deal more with political machines than they do with their own communities. For example, we should all be asking the Congressional Black Caucus a Janet Jackson question: what have you done for me lately?
One demand-side step we can take to move everyday-leaders into opportunities for even broader impact is to focus our local election votes on promoting new leaders. By the time someone has become a Congresswoman, she has probably already served on your local school board and other smaller roles. So maybe we should never vote for a new school board candidate over 35, just to make sure that new ideas keep circulating.
